RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES AND MILITARY FEUDALISMdeath in 1236 he subjected Bengal to his control after having subdued the
followers of Bakhtiyar Khalji in Bihar. This general had been murdered in
1206, but his companions had held on to his territory.
In addition to these problems of the internal consolidation of his realm,
Iltutmish also had to defend it against the Mongols who now appeared in
India. In hot pursuit of the son of the Chwaresm Shah whom he had
defeated, Chingis Khan reached the Indus in 1221. Iltutmish’s success in
keeping the Mongols out was due to the fact that he had wisely refrained
from taking sides when Chingis Khan attacked the Chwaresm Shah,
although this shah could lay claim to Iltutmish’s support as a fellow
Muslim. Chingis Khan left some troops in the Panjab, which remained a
thorn in the side of the sultanate of Delhi throughout the thirteenth
century. But the sultans and their troops proved a much better match for
the Mongol hordes than had the Hindu princes, whose old-fashioned and
cumbersome methods of warfare were no longer appropriate to the new
requirements of an effective defence of India.
The sultanate of Delhi: a new Indian empireThe main achievement of Qutb-ud-din Aibak and Iltutmish was that they
once more established an empire which matched that of the Guptas or of
Harsha (see Map 11). These two sultans were also the founders of Delhi as
their capital city. From its former status of small Rajput stronghold, Delhi
now emerged as an imperial capital. The seven cities which, from the
thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, grew up one after another in the
large area now covered by Delhi and New Delhi, symbolise a certain
continuity in Indian history. The most splendid of these cities was perhaps
that of the Great Mughal Shah Jahan, situated in the present ‘Old Delhi’
and incorporating the magnificent mosque and Red Fort. In the twentieth
century the British were to add an eighth city, New Delhi, which now
extends all the way from Qutb-ud-din’s tall Qutb Minar in the south to the
walls of Shah Jahan’s Old Delhi in the north. Qutb-ud-din and Iltutmish
also inaugurated Indo-Islamic art and architecture, their buildings ranking
with those of the Lodi sultans and of the Great Mughals as among India’s
most magnificent monuments. In addition to the famous Qutb Minar, the
Quwwat-ul-Islam (‘Power of Islam’) mosque and the tomb of Iltutmish are
indicative of these early architectural achievements: Iltutmish’s tomb was
the first of the great sequence of tombs erected for Islamic rulers in India.
The three decades after Iltutmish’s death were a time of incessant
struggle among the generals, governors, slaves and descendants of the
sultan. Iltutmish’s daughter Raziyyat ruled the realm for three years. The
contemporary chronicle Tabaqat-i-Nasari describes her as a wise ruler and
competent military leader: ‘She had all the admirable qualities befitting a
ruler. But of what use were these qualities to her as fate had denied her the